Engineering

The Centre has wide-ranging energy interests in energy policy, nuclear power and decommissioning, transport energy use and renewable energy. These include a track-record in industry-based postgraduate teaching, research expertise in nuclear safety, robotics, nuclear instrumentation, wave and tidal energy, low-head hydropower and energy policy, particularly in relation to transport. Geographically, Lancaster is ideally placed in relation to much of the UK’s nuclear supply chain and Sellafield – the greatest concentration of “the nuclear legacy” – as well as being close to the main centres of renewable energy.

The Centre collaborates with other academic groups including Edinburgh, Queens’ Belfast and Strathclyde Universities as well as the New and Renewable Energy Centre NaREC. Work by the group on transport energy use has been widely quoted in the press and two outputs were used in the 2007 White Paper Delivering a Sustainable Railway.

The latest award (September 2007) was funding for the Lloyd’s Register Chair in Nuclear Engineering and Decommissioning, which will fund two additional academic staff.

In wave power, the challenge is to develop a system that can convert wave energy economically and yet survive in the marine environment. The Centre was one of eight internationally-leading marine energy device developers (and the only university) selected to participate in the 2004-06 Carbon Trust Marine Energy Challenge. We are also a member of the FP6 NoE Coordinated Action on Ocean Energy, and active in formulating marine-energy research programmes under FP7.

Renewable Energy

The Lancaster University Renewable Energy Group carries out internationally leading research in the area of renewable energy. Much more detail is provided on the LUREG website.

In December 2004 the University held a successful conference Will the Lights Go Out? on UK energy policy. More than 230 people attended and a further conference was held in September 2005.

Despite the Government’s desire to put sustainability at the heart of their agenda, the success of these conferences was due to the UK energy policy being in disarray – a situation that has become worse,rather than better. Apart from the more obvious problems, such as energy supply being dependent on natural gas from some of the most politically unstable areas in the world and environmentally damaging air travel being largely untaxed, many other policies work directly against CO2 reduction.

The area where the department has made the biggest public impact is in the area of transport energy consumption. At various times our work has made headlines in most of the “quality press” and has been the subject of Parliamentary Questions. Two small research contracts, funded by the DfT, have been published as background information for the July 2007 White Paper. More information on the Group's work on transport can be found here.

Nuclear Energy

The department has a good reputation in nuclear instrumentation and runs MScs in decommisioning & environmental cleanup and safety engineering.

In 2008, the department is establishing The Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust Chair in Nuclear Engineering and Decommissioning, to give focus to activities in this area and allow the expansion of safety and nuclear work into other countries.